Tesla Model 3 Earns Five-Star Crash Safety Rating From NHTSA (jalopnik.com)

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has awarded the Tesla Model 3 with a five-star safety rating -- the highest possible score. This means that every car Tesla has built has earned a five-star rating. Jalopnik reports: The NHTSA tests cover three primary categories: Frontal Crash, Side Crash, and Rollover, and the Model 3 received the highest ratings in all categories. For some categories, it's easy to understand why Teslas do so well. Rollover resistance, for example, makes sense for cars that carry most of their weight at the very bottom, in the batteries sandwiched in the Tesla's chassis design. Other reasons for the remarkable crash safety may be that, without the need for a heavy chunk of metal as a drivetrain, effective and large crumple zones can be designed in, front and rear. The NHTSA has released videos of their frontal collision test, side pole collision test, and side collision test, for those who like watching these sort of things.

Comments

Any people wonder why the model 3 is hot

[SuperKendall]

In other stories, people have scoffed at the notion model 3 cars could possibly be more popular than luxury electric models coming out.

Yet here we have another reason beyond just top acceleration numbers why people may want to get a Tesla rather than something else...

Re: Any people wonder why the model 3 is hot

[PopeRatzo]

I own an Austin Martin, an MG, two audis, a Benz and a classic landrover, not counting the motorcycles.

You can't even figure out how to make a Slashdot account, and we're supposed to believe you had the wherewithal to accumulate all those vehicles?

I'm guessing you're talking about toy model cars, unlike the totally real Koenigsegg and Bugatti Chiron sitting out in my driveway right now. One is for me and the other is for my wife, Morgan Fairchild, which whom I have had sex.

Re:Any people wonder why the model 3 is hot

[Solandri]

You do realize that nearly all popular car models get a 5-star crash test rating? It's just that for some reason, a car getting a 5-star safety rating becomes a front-page news story only when it's a Tesla.

(This is not to denigrate Tesla's safety engineering. The lead safety engineer at BMW gave a guest lecture at my graduate structural engineering class. To our surprise, safety is dead last in the design process. First the artist designs the basic shape of the car. Then all the engineers design the mechanical and electrical components to fit within the artist-defined shape. Finally the safety engineer is given a budget of (say) 25 kg of steel, and told to add reinforcement to make the car pass the government and insurance institute safety tests. So all it would take to design a safer car is to move the safety engineer earlier in the design process, which I believe Tesla has done.)

Re: Any people wonder why the model 3 is hot

[Rei]

It is hot because the batteries burn at high temperature for some.

Model 3s have been driven (calculations in a previous Slashdot article) about 300-400 million miles so far. In the US, there's a car fire once in every ~20 million miles. So far the shorts (who've been desperate to find any Model 3 fires they can find) have found evidence of one - count it, one - fire in a Model 3. And that was in a Model 3 at the factory (salvage yard: Fremont; miles on the odometer: 1), not an owner vehicle. And when you look at the damage, it's heaviest on the front bumper, least around the battery.

Meanwhile, new BMWs in South Korea have been catching fire at a rate of half a dozen vehicles per month. Not cars in accidents - most of them have been in parked cars. But of course, we don't report on things like that because, hey, they're not Tesla. Tesla is one of the few automakers which has not had to have fire-related recalls in the past several years. A number of major automakers have had to in the past several months. Gee, who would have ever thought that a combustion vehicle, propelled by combusting a highly flammable fuel, might sometimes have issues with unintended combustion?

Re: Any people wonder why the model 3 is hot

[Rei]

In all categories and all subcategories as well? No, that is not normal, even for luxury cars. Seriously, just compare the pole tests for starters.

Re: Any people wonder why the model 3 is hot

[Anonymous Coward]

The crash tests results of your motorcycle should be very interesting...

Re:Any people wonder why the model 3 is hot

[Anonymous Coward]

Overall five stars yes, but not all 5 stars.
There are [only] two other cars that get rated as high: The Toyota Camry and Subaru Forester
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkiley5/2018/09/20/can-tesla-model-3s-five-star-nhtsa-rating-change-elon-musks-bad-month/#42426833103b

Time for a breath of fresh air

[drinkypoo]

Now can we finally see the end of the morons claiming that Tesla doesn't know how to build cars, because it's harrrrrrrd? Sure, it's a hard job. That's why Tesla hired people who know how to do it.

Re: Time for a breath of fresh air

[Luckyo]

The lies are getting rather desperate considering that the only two automotive majors that haven't gone bankrupt are Ford and Tesla. All others have.

You have to at least try to make it look like you're not just lying through your teeth you know.

Re: Time for a breath of fresh air

[SuperKendall]

Tesla still doesn't know how to build cars. As in, in volume

Can you build 8000 cars a month? Because Tesla is almost there.

You see, once they figured out how to actually produce in volume, from there it's very easy to scale up (as long as you are not constrained by suppliers).

Building them for sale without going broke is what is hard, and what Tesla cannot do.

That sounds scary! Lucky for Tesla what you are saying is a bald-faced lie. But then you are an AC so I'm sure no-one believed what you were saying anyway.

Tesla has a ~20% profit margin

[SuperKendall]

Hey, when you sell cars below cost

Well we all know AC's lie, but by how much?

Here's a good example of a real-life measurement you can use to determine how much fabrication goes into the average AC statement, because Tesla has around a 20% profit margin per car - 5x higher than Ford. Kind of a lot different than "losing money on every car".

Hey, who you gonna believe, a smooth-talking AC where *certainly* has nothing against Tesla, or your lying Ars?

Re:Tesla has a ~20% profit margin

[Rei]

but include the REQUIRED SG&A expenses

Totally. When Tesla runs a welding robot faster, that totally makes them build and fill a new office building!

SG&A is not part of gross margin for a reason: it does not rise in correlation with production volumes as a production line spools up. Increasing production rates on a line lowersCOGS, by decreasing hardware depreciation. Without refining of proction processes, labour costs increases linearly with volumes (labour being only a fraction of COGS), but refining production processes - something that happens every month as a new line matures - decreases labour. SG&A, by contrast, scales at a far-below-linear relationship to production volumes. Stamping out panels faster doesn't mean that you need to hire a new janitor. Simplifying how to attach two components with less labour doesn't mean you have to hire a new webmaster. Reducing interruptions in the paint shop doesn't mean you have to hire a new director of accounting. Heck, should we even bother talking about the SG&A expense that is operating the supercharger network - formerly a (expensive) loss leader, but presently converting to a profit centre as Model 3 volumes expand, and for which the vast majority ofchargers (aka those in less densely populated areas) are able to vastly increase their service volumes without any capital expenses?

I also love the fact that you never mention the fact that Tesla took a SG&A hit in Q2 in order to reduce its SG&A expenses from Q3 onward, but let's not worry our little heads about that!

Re:Tesla has a ~20% profit margin

[Rei]

lot of those expenses are things like improving the service centres to cope with the demand

That's not SG&A, that's "Services and Other". Services and Other cost Tesla a net $116M in Q2, vs. revenue of $4B, aka eating up less than 3% of their gross margin.

There were already ridiculous delays getting parts and basic repairs done, six months not being unusual for things like accident damage.

6 months is highly unusual. Of course, you can always find some body shop somewhere for any brand that has hundreds of thousands of vehicles on the road that takes an inordinate amount of time. That doesn't make that "normal". Want to make there be zero cases of abnormal crash repair times (for shorts to find out about and share widely every chance they get) when you don't control the body shops? Good luck with that.

S & X repairs from accidents are usually several weeks to a month. But these are much lower volume vehicles than the 3. In the Model 3 Owners Survey, the average repair took under a week. Speaking of Model 3 repairs...